The present invention concerns a system for the telemanagement of working parameters in weaving looms and a method of teleassistance based on said system.
The technological progress in the weaving loom field has allowed to reach very high levels in the electronic management of looms and of their operation parameters, making a large number of data available, apt to be detected in real time thanks to a capillary distribution of sensors in correspondence of all the main loom members.
The acquisition of data in digital format has the advantage of allowing to suitably sort and reprocess such data with computerized systems, so as to be able to supply a set of useful information in very short times.
Such a computerized management of the loom operation data resulted in a development of sophisticated diagnostic programs (software), which are apt to locate and recognize anomalous or peculiar operating conditions, previously acquired and coded, and to show them to the operator for a specific intervention (in case of failure) or in order to establish the loom history for maintenance purposes.
According to the prior art, all this takes place on the single loom in the following way.
The loom comprises a set of actuators (which drive the weaving members) coordinated by a control unit. Also the sensors distributed on the loom send to the control unit the values of the quantities detected.
A management logic is apt, through an appropriate self-diagnostic software, to reckon the operation irregularity or pecularities, making them intelligible on an inspection display console.
The technical operator of the weaving premises, or the technician sent by the assistance and maintenance service (often a department of the actual manufacturing company), detects the failure and reads its characteristics as displayed by the self-diagnostic program on the inspection console. If he is in a position to autonomously solve the problem, he operates on the loom with a specific intervention.
In the contrary event, the technician communicates with the service center (through a telephone conversation or by sending a fax or an e-mail to apply for help), transmitting the information in his possession.
The service center is forced to reprocess the information received, so as to make it intelligible to its own diagnostic system. Since on the service center side it is not available a historical or statistical memory allowing to know in detail the xe2x80x9clifexe2x80x9d and operating conditions of the specific loom, the diagnostic and solution routine is rather complex and sometimes requires even several exchanges of information between the technician and the center, which takes a long time.
In some cases, when interventions have already been made in the specific weaving premises, the service center can look through the intervention reports (usually drawn up on paper by the technicians when leaving the client""s site of intervention), in order to verify whether there are any elements apt to suggest the solution to be adopted; as it can be gathered, this type of work turns out to be very expensive, not very satisfactory and scarcely efficient.
At the end of the diagnosis, the service center transmits to the customer, or to his own operator on site, the sequence of operations which should be carried out in order to solve the technical problem, and the technician on the loom site provides to carry them out.
This way to proceedxe2x80x94with the introduction of the potentialities offered by modern weaving looms, and being confronted with the ever increasing requirements of the usersxe2x80x94turns out to be more and more inadequate.
In particular, the requirement has arisen to offer a more efficient and prompt service of assistance, as well as possibly having an extra-value.
With these targets in mind, the Applicant has undertaken the task to supply an original system apt to take full advantage of the potentialities available, particularly inspired by the fact that the solution, specifically to the textile problemsxe2x80x94but also to the technological (mechanical and electronic) problems in generalxe2x80x94depends more and more on the possibility to have properly stored, interdependent and complete historical data.
Another object of the present invention is to supply a system which requires less human intervention, so as to lower the costs and reduce the intervention times.
A further object of the present invention is to supply a system which, besides supplying diagnostic capabilities and assistance to failures, is apt to utilize the same kind of information to supply an additional extra-value feature, in normal operating conditions.
According to an aspect of the present invention, it is provided a system of teleassistance which allows a weaving premises and a remote service center to share, in real time, the setup data of a loom out of work for failurexe2x80x94for a fast diagnosis and repair of the damagexe2x80x94as well as to collect, in a sorted and systematic form, an amount of textile, electronic and mechanical data, meant to build up a central reference database supplying an extra-value.